Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sam Cooke's voice is a dream. If you've never heard Sam Cooke sing, but you've woken up in the arms of the one you love, then you know the sound of his voice. If you've never heard Sam Cooke croon, but you've eaten the chocolate mousse at Tartine Bakery, you've heard him sing. If you haven't heard Sam Cooke, rejoice in this- life can easily get better.

Somehow, the Robitussin worked. It's become perfectly clear to me that I have absolutely no idea how the human body works. It's also pretty clear to me that beer, cigarettes, airplanes, and extreme temperature changes aren't any good for it. At least, not in my case. I'm proud of mine holding out a solid seven weeks. Way to go, body. Sorry I treated you like crap.

It's an incredible thing not to have to think about things like walking, or drinking, or shitting. And that's what it is. It's shitting. It's a foul, disgusting thing that we want out of our asses and out of our homes as quickly as possible. And the majority of the world seems to be wallowing in it. I sometimes wonder how direct the relationship is between the amount of shit that I've bought, the quickness with which shit leaves my home, and the amount of shit I've helped to cause the faceless mass that is the rest of the world. Kundera has a good bit about this, the shitting that is, in THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. I'd prefer to underline that, but there doesn't seem to be the option here.

I talked to my grandfather today. Whole arm is black and blue, down to the wrist. He's cool. It's the blood thinner he's on. Anytime he's injured, he's black and blue to the bone. "That's the stuff you gotta deal with when you get old," he said. Normally he adds how much it sucks. Today he sounded resigned to it. Maybe that's the last thing to go. I'm still not sure what I'm more afraid of- the gradual loss of each of my faculties in old age, or death.

Instead of dwelling on all of that, I'm finally getting to work on a new series of pieces that are inspired by one I began for my sister about four years ago. I figure I should probably up the rate to more than one per decade if I'm going to get a show together.

Oh, and listening to Sam Cooke.

That and the steady rhythm of dissecting newspapers and running my fingers through glue puts my mind at ease.

Friday, January 30, 2009

I'm at home. Sick. Working from home. Technology both cramps my style and blows my mind. I was on my phone a few months ago in a park talking to the friend I was meeting for lunch- we were trying to find one another- and he said, "How cool would it have been if we had this as kids?" I'm not actually sure that he said that. But the point stands.

Yesterday I came home from work early to crawl into bed and die and ended up sitting in front of the monstrosity of a computer I now own for almost three hours. I use the phrase, "now own," even though I've owned it since last summer. I use this phrase because I understand about 1/1000th of what it's capable. This became even more apparent last night as I was digging through help files trying to figure out why my video chat installation wasn't working. Then it started working. I don't know why. But I'm glad it did. This week marks the first time I've ever engaged in video chat. I was at work and a black box appears over a chat box initiated by that same friend with whom I was having lunch in the park and there you have it, a perfect reason to use the word viola in a blog. I'm too sick and lazy right now to figure out the accent mark. Maybe not.

Violá.

I was introduced to computers at a pretty young age. I had an Atari 800. I had an external floppy disk drive. Eat your heart out, ladies. I had a tuner and a pair of rabbit ears. And yet, when my aunt bought me a Nintendo for Christmas despite my father, who worked in sales for a computer company and who'd helped me put together that set-up, I thought she was going to end up in the trunk of our Volvo. They never really got along.

Most of my friends and co-workers know of my reluctance to get onto the pop-tech bandwagon. But it's a total lie to say that I don't like technology. I'm a huge geek for it. I spent an hour at work one day loading software to view The World Telescope and when I did it made me tear up it was so beautiful. The only thing that keeps me from being frustrated that there's not a fully-functional jetpack in production is that it'd probably be used for war more than any other purpose. I want my computer to be a screen that appears out of thin air and allows me to manipulate it by moving my hands and speaking and I'm confident that this will happen in my lifetime. But it scares me when people stop asking questions about the effect any type of behavior that becomes popular has on our well-being, not to mention our culture, which may be one and the same. I don't understand why I'd want to have an instant messenger that allows me to digitally chat with someone that I can see in the same room, unless of course it's to talk about how hungover we are and how much we don't want to be at work. I see that there are useful applications of technology. What I don't see is the general population using them usefully. And I'm not sure that I know any better. That's why I'm cautious. This stuff is addictive and solipsistic. Case in point, I'm in bed, blogging about myself and technology.

In other news, it's nice to have a president that seems to have a sense of justice.